On the front lines of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic: Meaning-making and shared trauma

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has become known as the greatest crisis of our lifetime, bringing about psychological, physical, and social distress to us individually, collectively, nationally, and globally. Social workers are skilled in supporting complex trauma, pain, and loss, yet doing so while simultaneously suffering from the same distress is not common practice. Social workers in health care have been uniquely and gravely impacted by this pandemic, often on the front lines, confronted face-to-face with the trauma of COVID-19, all the while supporting patients, colleagues, healthcare staff, families, and friends in parallel through their own suffering. The reflections that follow are a culmination of living through the COVID-19 pandemic as a social work leader in a New York City (NYC) hospital, with NYC being the first national epicenter of this pandemic. The existential distress of this shared trauma drives us to search for sources of meaning and hope through the pain and suffering. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)